Haunted by Noella Rain is a journey into turmoil-actual emotional attachment and a ghost of love that stays alive but agonizingly remains out of reach. Words are raw and powerful, alike in this very pitch of the artist’s piece to capture the anguish of heartbreak with a strongly haunting atmosphere. Noella Rain poetically illustrates the painful and convoluted experience one feels when being haunted, yet still alive. It’s a song that drags along listeners into the inescapable clutches of nostalgia, unfulfilled longing, and the bitter sense of isolation that comes with loving someone you can’t let go of.

She says, with the first verse, “I’m in the mood to dissipate into the sky / Maybe I’d find closure if I became the night.” It is a wish to run away from the load of memory, almost as if it were like merging with the vastness of the night that gave her peace. The urge to “dissipate” speaks to dissolve, to shed the crippling weight of emotions, a sentiment with which anyone who has ever attempted to run from her emotions will identify. Noella introduces imagery that is at once fragile and intensive in its invocation of emotional pain; the memories she clings to are both sacrosanct and self-destructive. The secrecy around “all that ached inside” then, in fact, speaks volumes about the deep vulnerability which she had once shared even the deepest of fears within her-that she is now being haunted with.

The repeating of “I’m haunted by someone who’s still alive” poignantly in the chorus captures within itself the crux of the song. Here, “haunted” takes on a double meaning, pointing both to the ghostly presence of the person in her life and to the paradox of being haunted by a person who hasn’t left the world but who is unreachable. The urge to phone every night, despite knowing it would bring more pain, underlines the compulsive nature of longing. When did I memorize your number in my head? Wish I could forget” is the potent one. Of course, this is painfully relatable; most are familiar with the ache when a relationship is done, and even to a number once important on your phone.

The intimacy of late-night hours is expressed in the second verse: “Now 4 A.M holds all my secrets just as you did mine.” A wakeful, early morning takes on a symbolic, vivid quality, in which emotions run deep, secrets pop to the surface, and memories become inescapable. She admits, “I fight you like I fight my sleep,” and reveals that trying to resist this memory is just as tiring as fighting insomnia, too, for which she has already been defeated. The line now “Restless unless I’m immersed in an illusion” shows a tragic surrender to the emotional “illusion” of this relationship, where even the momentary vision of connection provides some comfort.

The bridge dips into the philosophical aspects of haunting, suggesting perhaps that haunting is not the fault of the person who lingers but our own minds. The line “But aren’t we really only haunted by what we can’t accept” meets a universal reality about attachment: the most things that haunt us are attached to our unresolved feelings inside ourselves. That line turns attention inward, in a reflective and introspective way, rather than an all-out attack against the other person.

In the final chorus, “Your a ghost but how can that be? / Your not dead but I wish you were to me” develops emotional confusion and finale, which is in the wish of the artist. It’s a brutal, honest wish to be free, suggesting that only by killing the memory could she, at last, be free. The lyrics being sung by Noella Rain “Haunted” invite the listeners into an experience that is melancholic but highly relatable. She wondrously captures the torment of a ghost memory and beautifully expresses how emotionally complicated it feels while one tries to move on but gets held back unwillingly.